Home owners often have a variety of machines for receiving information services, such as a cable receiver box, several telephones, an answering machine, a caller ID box, a home Local Area Network (LAN), and a dial up connection to the internet. Each information carrier feels compelled to have their own software and hardware. Presently all these different machines operate separately and often redundantly. These information carriers are now offering each other's products. Cable television operators want to provide the home owner with telephone service, while telephone companies want to provide cable television services. Satellite television services want to offer high speed connections to the internet. The user is often overwhelmed by the multitude of choices and is not interested in learning the different hardware and software requirements for each of these different carriers of information.
Thus there exists a need for a home gateway system that can integrate the functions of these various devices, so that a user need not concern himself with the particular carrier providing the service.